Tag: Richard Harper

The Lord’s Hand

The ‘Determined Ministries’ website says that…

‘While training for the Lord’s service at Ambassador Baptist College it was evident that the Lord’s hand was on Brother Richard. He was named the recipient of the prestigious Hand Revival Ministries Scholarship given to the student showing the greatest promise in Evangelism … [emphasis added]’

Since it was the Lord’s hand that was on Brother Richard, and since he received the ‘Hand Revival Ministries Scholarship,’ I assume that Richard [may I call you Dick?] is the Lord’s hand.

‘Revival’ is a prominent, Fundamentalist theme. You pray for revival, hope for revival, repent for revival, work for revival, meet for revival and preach for revival, and more. Presumably, you yourself are relivable.

‘Revive’ is a Bible word; but it isn’t a common one. And it’s mainly an OT word. The KJV uses it 14 times in the OT, and not necessarily in ways that fundamentalists mean. The New American Standard is more forgiving with 29 uses. More than half of these are in Ps 119. In the NT, we get Lu 15:24 in ‘this son of mine was dead and has come to life again,’ in Ro 7:9, ‘sin revived and I died,’ and Phil 4:10, ‘you revived your concern for me.’

Fundamentalism’s heavy emphasis on revival isn’t found in Scripture. Yet the website states that Dick has conducted over 650 revivals. It seems that having or being the Lord’s Hand has its privileges.

Schedule Revival

Speaking of scheduling revival [since that’s apparently how it happens], you can download Dick’s pre-meeting [revival?] information here. Among those documents is a personal checklist for revival. It asks about your prayer life, devotional life, unconfessed sin, stubbornness [disagreeing with the visiting evangelist, perhaps?], and more.

Dick’s doctrinal statement is uniquely organized. As a rule, doctrinal statements begin with God — Father, Son and Spirit, and describe their works. Then comes revelation, creation, the fall, redemption, last things and the like. Not so with the Lord’s hand.

Dick’s statement starts with the Bible, goes to Textus Recptus, the KJV [i.e., Textus Recptus again], the Trinity, creation, need of salvation, the works of Christ, our conscious existence after death, moral responsibility, eternal security, the great commission, the works of Christ again, eschatology, charismatic gifts and … well … you get the idea.

For the brave of heart, several videos are available. After several minutes, it occurred to me that Dick organizes sermons on the same principle he uses for writing his doctrine statement.